Mario Vargas Llosa: Intellectuals of the world have solidarity with Ukraine

A winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is confident that intellectuals of the world have solidarity with Ukraine.

Mario Vargas Llosa said it at a meeting with students of Taras Shevchenko National University ofKyiv, the Mirror Weakly (Ukraine) reports.

“Ukraine wants today to form a new vision of Europe. Intellectuals of the world are at large skeptical and pessimistic about future, but all intellectuals have solidarity with Ukraine today,” the writer said. “The events in your country inspire all democratic forces on the planet on the struggle against the dictatorial spirit we still see today.”

Llosa recalled that literature in Latin America has always been a form of protest and resistance against authoritarianism and totalitarianism. “The active society that reads and has rich literature is more prepared to resist attempts of manipulation,” the writer said. He began his lecture with the remark that “literature gives an opportunity to travel in space and time using your imagination”.

The writer says he enjoys “the humour of life”. He was under the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre (who was considered to be an iconic writer and philosopher in Latin America) who described the reality without laughter. Vargas Llosa refused to give advice to his readers and Ukrainian students who came to the meeting. “The youth does not like advice,” he joked. “My only recommendation is to read good books.”

Mario Vargas Llosa received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat". He is considered to be among major Latin America's writers of the 20th century along with Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Julio Cortazar.